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A year ago, Minnesota’s RPI (20 on Selection Sunday) benefitted from their strong strength of schedule (as defined by the RPI – not as any rational human would define it). Their opponents’ strength of schedule (“SOS”), worth 50% of the RPI, was .5953 as the NCAA tourney field was being finalized.

The Gophers enjoyed a well-constructed schedule under which they faced a number of relative easy games against beatable competition who happened to finish the year with good win-loss records.

For example, no one was concerned about hosting Mount St. Mary’s. Minnesota won 80-56. But, for purposes of Minnesota’s Selection Sunday SOS, Mount St. Mary’s had a record of 19-14 (.5758).

Things will not be the same in 2017-18. The Gophers SOS will be considerably weaker.

Late Night Hoops projects an SOS on Selection Sunday of just .5520, or .0433 less than 2016-17. If we adjust last year’s RPI of .6109 for only the impact of the lower SOS (e.g., 50% of .0433), the Gophers would have had a Selection Sunday RPI of 39 instead of 20.

First, a tip of the hat to Open Look Analytics (Openlookanalytics.com and @OLAnalytics on Twitter) for their great data which was used for this article. College programs should be subscribing to their services.

From 2014 through 2017, how many adidas Uprising players have posted an Offensive Rating (“ORtg”) of more than 125, a usage rate of more than 25% and played at least 200 minutes? The answer is two.

In 2016, 2018 Romeo Langford had an ORtg of 126.4 and a usage of 27.0%. Langford is currently ranked as the sixth best prospect in the 2018 class by Rivals, 24/7, ESPN and Scout.

The other player is 2018 Marquette commit Joey Hauser. Joey’s ORtg this year was 127.7 and his usage was 29.1%.

It’s important to understand how a player got to their ORtg and usage. In Hauser’s case, his eFG% of 57.7% isn’t earth shattering, but includes good indicators for the future.

His 3FG% of 46.3% was excellent, but only 32% of his field goal attempts were from deep. Scoring a variety of different ways, his 2FG% was a solid 52.2%.

Before last season began, we shared thoughts on Marquette’s projected four factor differentials for the 2016-17 season, comparing them to 2015-16. The key in reaching the NCAA tournament for the Warriors was going to be effective field goal percentage differential.

We said, “A net improvement of 2.5% in eFG% differential means a +5.8% and places Marquette in or around the top 35 of eFG% differential, by far the most important of the four factors. Do that, and they are in business even without improvement in rebounding.”

As of Selection Sunday, Marquette’s actual eFG% differential was 5.7% (57.6% on offense, 51.9% on defense) and they were selected to the tourney’s field.

On Selection Sunday, Marquette had an RPI of 61. If the largest component of RPI – opponents’ win-loss performance against all D-I teams except MU – would have been the same as 2015-16, Marquette would have had an RPI that was .0224 lower, slotting them at 82 in the RPI and likely out of the NCAA tournament.

The Warriors’ strength of schedule ranked them 219 of 351 teams as of Selection Sunday this season. This was a sizable improvement from 326 in 2015-16.

Our claims that most people were underestimating the team and that they projected to be set for a strong 2017-18 were proven to be true. From here, things could continue to go well (e.g., a strong 2017-18 season, great success on the recruiting trail), or they could become more challenging.

However, due to the other two issues, the seat still probably won’t get hot soon even if team performance and recruiting go south.

Advanced stats for individuals and the team’s four factors are included below. They reflect Howard Pulley’s eight games (7-1 record) in EYBL through today, April 30, 2017. Key individual highlights include: